Grandma Panther's Diaries

During my last trip to Iowa, I was able to scan in three more volumes of my grandmother's diaries that my aunt has. I posted the scans online privately for my cousins to browse. One cousin made a comment, at least half joking, that he couldn't believe he had to click a link for each and every page, asking what it would cost to have it on paper.

Because he put the idea in my mind and I have the means and patience to do so, I started the next step of the project. Now, two months later, it's done! I've taken each of the two-page scans, split them into their individual pages, did the slight rotation and cropping necessary to have it look nice and put them together in books that are now available to purchase on Lulu.com through private links provided to my aunts and cousins and their children. They won't be available to the general public. The price for these books range from $3.00 to $7.50, depending on the number of pages. The diaries range from a single page for each day of the year for over 365 pages total down to a page per week in what amounts to a daily planner book for less than 50 pages total.


These six books cover the years 1968, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1980. My grandmother used the end of the 1977 book to put in monthly summaries in 1978 rather than have a separate diary for that year.

In addition to the paperback books, I'm also providing pdfs of the books so my cousins don't have to purchase them if they don't want to. This is definitely not a money-making project. I feel that my grandmother's daily diaries are too important to be lost to time and I know that there are several of  my cousins that will definitely want these.


Here is a sample of what the books look like.

The dimensions of every book, except for the thickness are all the same and the cover of each book will look the same except for the year. The set should look nice sitting together on a book shelf.

 Since the page sizes in the books go by paperback book standard sizes and the diaries are not standard sizes, each book page will have a white background with images of the diary page in the center.

Hopefully, making these available will also spur the holders of the remaining diary volumes to make them available for me to scan and get out there for the rest of our cousins to see. It is my belief that there are probably another 14-21 volumes out there. Could you imagine that dozens of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren could potentially have a 20-30 volume collection of their grandmother or great-grandmother's diaries sitting on their bookshelves in their homes? I want to make it happen.

I received my initial copies yesterday. They look great!

--Matt